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College students are one step closer to returning to class as a bill forcing their 12,000 striking instructors back to work passed second reading during an emergency weekend session at the Ontario legislature. Final approval is expected Sunday.

Bill 178, which puts an end to the five-week-old job action by college instructors and mandates binding mediation-arbitration, was approved 37-18.

It was supported by all Liberal and Progressive Conservative MPPs in attendance, with the New Democrats and an independent MPP voting against.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who has come under fire for rejecting moves to pass the legislation immediately, said her party remains opposed to it because it is “anti-worker,” but the stance won’t affect when students return to class.

“The biggest problem with it is that it is a violation of the charter rights of the workers in question here,” she said, blaming the government for the record-breaking job action that has affected as many as 500,000 students.

However, Horwath added, “the most important thing to recognize is that faculty will be back on Monday, students will likely be back on Tuesday. Nothing that happens over this weekend — other than us doing our due diligence — is going to change that.”

Deputy Premier Deb Matthews warned there may be programs at some colleges where students won’t return to class until Wednesday.

“This strike is affecting hundreds of thousands of students,” said Matthews, who is also the province’s post-secondary minister, during debate.

“It is unfair to them to keep them out any longer. The semester is in jeopardy of being lost. Had we passed this legislation on Thursday or even on Friday, students would have and could have been in the classroom by Monday, but the NDP chose to block that from happening.”

As colleges prepare to meet with faculty Monday to sort out the resumption of classes that have been on hiatus since Oct. 16, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union sent a bulletin to members advising them to spend the first 20 minutes talking to students about why they went on strike.

The job action, the longest in faculty’s history, will probably cost the union about $20 million, said OPSEU head Warren “Smokey” Thomas.

“It’s expensive,” he said. “We still have $50 million left in the strike fund though.”

Thomas also said the NDP is doing the right thing by forcing discussion and debate on the back-to-work bill and that his union plans a court challenge at a later date.

In the legislature, Progressive Conservative MPP Lorne Coe spoke of the toll on students.

“Students have had to go through an awful lot these last five weeks,” said Coe (Whitby-Oshawa), his party’s post-secondary critic. “They’re understandably worried about how they will make up the lost time as colleges release back-to-school plans that include extending the semester right up to Christmas.

“For five weeks, students were left wondering how they could afford to pay for their education. For five weeks, students were forced to sell personal belongings just to make ends meet. For five weeks, students were the ones caught in the crossfire. For five weeks, while the Liberals sat at their desks, twiddling their thumbs, college students were forced to put their futures on hold.”

PC MPP John Yakabuski (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke) said “after five weeks and the semester’s now threatened — it was something that had to be acted upon.”

Horwath said the government could have put pressure “so much earlier to make sure that a fair deal could get done at the bargaining table” and said years of underfunding means Ontario is “the lowest in the entire country when it comes to per-student funding in the college system.”

The independent MPP who voted against the back-to-work bill was Jack MacLaren (Carleton—Mississippi Mills), a former PC who is now a member of the fledgling Trillium Party of Ontario.

Two NDP members — Percy Hatfield (Windsor-Tecumseh) and Sarah Campbell (Kenora—Rainy River) — are absent for the weekend debates and votes, for personal reasons.

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